‘Drug use is a health issue; more interaction needed’

Eastern Mirror Desk
Dimapur, June 26: This year, on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, “Health for Justice. Justice for Health” was the underlying theme with an aim to raise awareness on major problems faced by drug abusers. It was also intended to shed light on the stigma surrounding it, which some experts think the “illicit” tone has got a “policing element” to it.

Speaking to Eastern Mirror via telephone, a person who has been working with various projects involving drug usage and its users for 19 years said that there should be three approaches to drug awareness — demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction.

Demand reduction which refers to efforts made to reduce the demand for illegal drugs using awareness and sensitisation programmes, while supply reduction is about the law enforcement agencies making the drugs scarce, expensive and less tolerable by society.

And lastly, harm reduction is about the government’s policies where a drug user can be rehabilitated, and therefore cause less harm to oneself.

“These three (approaches) should amalgamate together like a triangle since drug use is a health issue; we need to have more interactions by doing away with stereotype programmes,” the source said, adding that abstinence groups and harm reduction programmes should work together.

The source further explained that in Naga society, drug users still live with their extended families, and therefore it is very important for the family to get involved in the treatment process as well.

“It is very difficult for the user to go for treatment on his or her own, so family support is needed,” the source said, adding that it is important to educate the family of the drug users in case of any over dose as they will be the first respondents.

It may be mentioned that there are five Integrated Rehabilitation Centres for Addicts (IRCA) in Nagaland under the central scheme of the social justice and empowerment department namely Prodigals’ Home (Dimapur), Youth Mission (Kohima), Kripa Foundation (Kohima), Bethesda Youth Welfare Centre (Dimapur) and Ayolta Human Resources Society (Longleng).

In 2016, it was reported that Nagaland had introduced a drug abuse prevention and treatment policy where the state’s social welfare department would be the nodal agency for implementing efforts on the three approaches. The policy stated that drugs and alcohol abuse is a medically recognised disease affecting the individual, family and community where strategies needed to be developed to address prevention, treatment and social reintegration.

Govt. questioned on steps taken to eradicate drug abuse

During the commemoration programme of the occasion at DBIDL, Dimapur on Wednesday, programme officer of North East Technical Support unit Users (Netsu), Ajongba Imchen questioned the government about the steps being taken to eradicate drug trafficking and abuse.

The programme was jointly organised by Miqlat Ministry, DAPCU, Prodigals’ Home in collaboration with DDLSA and NNAGA-DAO, Dimapur.

“International and national bodies have been involved to eradicate this (drug trafficking and abuse) but it has been a failure for the last 30 years,” said Imchen, adding that he wasn’t aware of any sanctions made by the state government for this cause.

“We are aware and give intensive awareness programmes to the users where legal service authorities are committed to deliver justice and help the poor,” said Imchen and encouraged all stakeholders and functionaries to come together and device various methods to eradicate the issue.

Senior psychiatrist of the district hospital, Dimapur, Dr. C Kezo, said during the programme that substance abuse not only affects the user but also the ones close to him or her which leads to many problems including domestic violence.